Grandfather
by 10 of Spades
Summary: Anakin Skywalker tries to comfort a dying Kylo Ren during the destruction of Starkiller Base.
"Grandfather." Anakin saw his grandson's breath trickle out in icy puffs. It was time. He could hear his grandson softly crying as the sky seemed to crumble and the earth froze. Everything around them was chaos, but within the end of the world, there was a moment. It was time. _Time for peace_. He knelt in the snow next to the child he had tried to save.

Kylo Ren's face was split in two, the skin around the smoldering gash swollen and irritated, closing one of his dark eyes, and squinting the other, but it did not prevent tears from painfully swimming down his skin. Still, even as he lay there, the life ebbing out of him like his frozen breaths, each further and further apart, the apprentice's numb fingers continued to pry at the wound at his side. Blood stained the snow as well as his digits. _Time for peace._ Anakin rested his hand on his grandson's. _Time for peace. Time to die._ Life had been too cruel. Perhaps death would be a lesser torture. As the dying man whimpered, his grandfather could see streaks of Ben shining through his tears. The torn's hand fell in the snow, and he stopped his destruction.

 _Time to die_ , Anakin told himself, running a hand across Ben's face, though he knew the child wouldn't feel it. For once, Anakin felt like he were helping, soothing. Ben Solo closed his dark eyes as if to sleep. He never slept when his grandfather had come. _Time for forgiveness._ A slow breath eased its way out of Ben's lips and crystallized in the air. Anakin could feel the Force weakening like a heartbeat, pulsing its way into a place where it would not be used for pain or death. _Time to die._

Ben squeezed his eyes, still in pain. _Time for peace_ , his grandfather tried to fix. Yet, the apprentice's breathing became more labored, agony shooting back across his body, rejecting all that called him away from life. He wrenched open his jaw and screamed a sound of pure hatred and rage, of suffering and anger. _Time for peace. Time for forgiveness. Time to die,_ Anakin begged, his useless form pawing at the contorted form of his grandson. "Why?" Kylo Ren pleaded. Without his mask, he looked so childlike, weeping in the snow. "Why am I left weak when I beg for strength?," he muttered between choking sobs. "Why am I haunted when I killed to be free? Why is time so cruel when I just want it to _stop_? What more can I do? Grandfather, have I not done enough?" He forced his eyes open, staring directly, determined into Anakin's face. Upon such contact, the dead man recoiled. The intensity was scalding: accusation and guilt. Could he see him? Had he seen him the entire time? _Time to die._ The grandfather tried to cover the man's eyes with his hands, but those black holes kept staring back at him. "Grandfather, have I not done enough?" Ben cried in a sentence that tore at his throat.

Another darted from within the shadows, passed through the trees and into the forsaken clearing. When he passed into the light, his fire-like hair glinted among the rest of the destruction. General Hux seemed disgusted that his superior still clung to life. _Don't take him away,_ Anakin screamed into a world that couldn't hear him. _Why can't you just let him die?_ The General knelt beside them both, but Kylo Ren seemed not to see him. "Grandfather, why?" he demanded. The commander tried to make him stop, struggling to tear the dying man away from the dead.

"Snoke has given the orders to complete your training," Hux recalled. _No._

"I've done enough!" Kylo Ren denied. There wasn't much time. The leader's lip curled, as he dragged the survivor from the stained snow, an escape ship waiting somewhere to transport them off the dying base. But even as he was being torn away, the young Skywalker still shouted in agony.

 _You've done enough,_ Anakin comforted, his turn to weep.

"Grandfather-" The child's voice echoed through the crumbling forest, as broken as the ground.

 _You don't deserve this, Ben,_ he confessed.

"-what-"

 _I was so proud._

 _"_ _more"_

 _My grandson,_

"can-"

 _I'm sorry you never knew._

"I-"

 _` Ben, please._

"do?"

Anakin stayed long after the echo faded into nothing, even when the ground shattered beneath his knees, even as it fell away into the stars. Anakin stayed until the world of the living melted away for the last time and the Force was the only thing left.

 _Grandson, you have always been enough for me._


End file.
